1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for controlling a printing device, and more particularly, to a system and method for controlling a printing device, capable of enabling a specific user to temporarily occupy a specific cassette or a specific sheet output position under certain conditions during the process of driving a printing device connected to a plurality of user computers through a network, thus preventing specific contents from being undesirably printed by another user when the specific user prints the specific contents using printing sheets.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, in outputting documents and drawings prepared by a working equipment such as a personal computer (PC) by a printing device, a plurality of PCs are simultaneously connected to a printing device shared by a plurality of PC users through a network. A printing device generally includes a cassette and a sheet outputting unit. However, the number of PCs connected to the printing device is limited. Therefore, when the number of used PCs is large, the number of printing devices which must be connected to the PCs increases accordingly. This is disadvantageous in saving space.
A printing device including various cassettes for various sizes of sheets such as A5, A4, A3, and B5 and a plurality of sheet outputting units is provided in order to let more PCs share a printing device, to thus solve the above problem. When such a printing device is used, it is possible to save space and to let a plurality of PC users select cassettes and sheet outputting units that are required for each of the users, to thus let the plurality of PC users simultaneously output specific contents.
However, in a network where the printing device including a plurality of cassettes and sheet outputting units are used, when a user among the plurality of users connected to the printing device prints specific contents using a cassette and a sheet outputting unit among the plurality of cassettes and sheet outputting units of the printing device, other contents may be undesirably printed by another user.
For example, when there is a command from the user “B” that specific contents should be printed by occupying the cassette “A” and the sheet outputting unit “a” while the user “A” prints other contents by occupying the cassette “A” and the sheet outputting unit “a”, the contents desired to be printed by the user “B” may be printed on the printing sheets of the user “A”.
Since the contents to be printed should be reprinted, working efficiency is lowered and large amounts of printing sheets are wasted. Therefore, a new system for controlling the printing device is required for solving the above problems.
Exemplar of the art are U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,296 issued to Padalino, et al. for Multi-function Machine with Interleaved Job Execution, U.S. Pat. No. 6,026,258 issued to Fresk et al. for Method for Temporarily Locking out Print Jobs on a Network Copier When Copier User Is Present, U.S. Pat. No. 5,220,674 issued to Morgan, et al. for Local Area Print Server for Requesting and Storing Required Resource Data and Forwarding Printer Status Message to Selected Destination, U.S. Pat. No. 5,699,493 issued to Davidson, Jr., et al. for Method and Apparatus for Providing Job Accounting Information to a Host Computer from a Printer, U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,015 issued to Martin, et al. for Method and Apparatus for Providing Remote Printer Resource Management, U.S. Pat. No. 5,727,135 issued to Webb, et al. for Multiple Printer Status Information Indication, U.S. Pat. No. 6,025,925 issued to Davidson, Jr., et al. for Method and Apparatus for Providing Accounting Information to Host Computer from a Printer. I have found that the art does not show an efficient way to avoid problems with undesirable printing by users on a shared printer.